Recycling

[Guest guest]

Here recycling started as a trend in the early 90's green wave, but has only just recently become common practice, with small recycling stations (a collection of containers for different things) becoming more and more common. I love recycling because I love sorting. Here in Sweden we sort by:

1. Organic, decomposable material.

2. Glass bottles, plastic PET-bottles and aluminium cans you get 1 Krona for if you take it back to the shop.

3. Other glass goes in a glass container; a white for clear class, green for colored glass (gets melted and recycled into new glass).

4. Other hard plastic (gets recycled into other plastic things where quality is of less importance, e.g. garbage bags).

5. Other metals (get sorted and recycled).

6. Paper (recycled into toilet paper).

7. Wood, cardboard, soft plastic and other burnable material (the energy from burning them gets recycled into heating houses).

8. Clothes (goes to the Salvation Army where they are sorted into sellable and shredable).

9. Batteries (go into little red cans placed in shops, gas stations and recycling stations).

10. Other hazardous waste (e.g. paint and other chemicals, light-bulbs, fluorescent tubes, old fridges etc. need to go to a big recycling station rather than your little local one that just has containers for some of the above).

Inger

Recycling

>: "In the early 90's there were recycling bins...."

We separate three ways:

1: Anything that will decompose in a reasonable amount of time is thrown into the 'compost' to degrade naturally into 'soil' amendments.

2: Anything that will turn to ash through burning is collected together to burn during the rainy season.

3: Anything that will neither decompose nor burn is collected together to take, every so many months, to the 'transfer station' where it is trucked to a central power station and land fill. There we have what is called 'single stream' sorting. Everything is chopped into little pieces and sorted. Iron with a magnet, other metals by weight, other materials by composition through a tumbling, shaking, sifting, screening process with humans enhancing the 'sort' at every step.

In town it is humorous to see a row of different colored bins in front of every home and business. I would guess that some are for 'garbage', some for 'recyclables', some for yard trimmings, etc.

Rainbow

PS: We do sort out plastic bags to return to the supermarket and bottles and cans to take to the local 'recycle' stand.

[Guest guest]

I wish they would ban burning where we live. All fall and winter

long someone is burning something in my neighborhood every weekend.

It makes it unpleasant to go outside and we live near a city and

pollution. Who knows what some are burning, besides leaves. Last week

someone was burning something weird and it got into our heating

system and in our house and in system in our cars.

>

> >: " Isn't this a contradiction in terms? "

>

> I live in a 'fire forest', see:

> http://www.siskiyous.edu/beartrail/knobcone.htm.

>

> I am only allowed to burn immediately following several inches of

rain.

>

>

> Rainbow

>

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 1/6/2006 2:10:21 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, rainbow@... writes:

Exactly! Clearing dead wood from this 'fire forest', that hasn't been ALLOWED to burn in a hundred years makes room for birds, small mammals, and hopefully even some of the larger ones, deer, mountain loin, even bear to return to it's former homeland.

Fire was a natural process that kept the forests from getting too thick and thus unhealthy. Because fires haven't been allowed in so long there is all this debris and understory that has built up. When there is a fire, rather than being regenerative like it used to be, now it is often very damaging and harmful to the forest.

We don't really have that problem in Alabama. Most of the land is privately owned and farmed so we have a vested interest in keeping the fire hazard down. For us, a 40 acre blaze is a monster of a fire. Still, we have plenty of wildlife in the forests. Personally I think it is a little too heavily tilted toward the deer and they are making things rough for other animals by eating up all the prime forage. But I think they are finally beginning to change to hunting laws to address that issue.

I have a cousin that lives on the Rappahannock River in Northern Virginia. The Washington DC sprawl is approaching them and will probably swallow them in the next 10 years or so. A shame too since that land has been farmed by the family for probably 300 years. Abutting our property is a state wildlife preserve that's been there for a long time. As the city people are moving into their dense subdivisions in the "country" (its hardly country when you have a mess of houses crammed in on quarter acre lots, as many as will fit on a 30 acre plot once the bulldozed the 200 year old house, not to mention shopping malls so big they have 30 different restaurants and more than 100 shops) and they think its cute to have animals around. So what they do is have animals taken from other parts of the state and released in the preserve. These animals were supposed to be native to the area, but most of them end up dead from either disease or other animals and often end up in my cousin's yard.

The county officials are incompetent as heck too. They told her to wrap the dead animal in a plastic bag and put in her freezer so they could come pick it up in a week or so to test it for rabies. I don't see any rational person doing that, especially since you have to test the brain within an hour of death for rabies anyway. I just don't think the local critters like the imported competition. There are several very large gray foxes up there, so big they look like good sized dogs, as well as smaller red foxes, opossum (big ones at that), raccoons, skunks, bobcats all those things.

So, these city folks feel like they're doing something good when they come to the release parties, but they don't stick around to see the thing dead within 2 weeks. Essentially they are taking a healthy animal from a fine home and putting it somewhere it is going to get killed. I hope the Bald Eagles they released last month fair better. Of course they will probably just be getting established when some jerk builds a subdivision around their nest and drives them off.

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 1/6/2006 2:10:21 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, rainbow@... writes:

Exactly! Clearing dead wood from this 'fire forest', that hasn't been ALLOWED to burn in a hundred years makes room for birds, small mammals, and hopefully even some of the larger ones, deer, mountain loin, even bear to return to it's former homeland.

Fire was a natural process that kept the forests from getting too thick and thus unhealthy. Because fires haven't been allowed in so long there is all this debris and understory that has built up. When there is a fire, rather than being regenerative like it used to be, now it is often very damaging and harmful to the forest.

We don't really have that problem in Alabama. Most of the land is privately owned and farmed so we have a vested interest in keeping the fire hazard down. For us, a 40 acre blaze is a monster of a fire. Still, we have plenty of wildlife in the forests. Personally I think it is a little too heavily tilted toward the deer and they are making things rough for other animals by eating up all the prime forage. But I think they are finally beginning to change to hunting laws to address that issue.

I have a cousin that lives on the Rappahannock River in Northern Virginia. The Washington DC sprawl is approaching them and will probably swallow them in the next 10 years or so. A shame too since that land has been farmed by the family for probably 300 years. Abutting our property is a state wildlife preserve that's been there for a long time. As the city people are moving into their dense subdivisions in the "country" (its hardly country when you have a mess of houses crammed in on quarter acre lots, as many as will fit on a 30 acre plot once the bulldozed the 200 year old house, not to mention shopping malls so big they have 30 different restaurants and more than 100 shops) and they think its cute to have animals around. So what they do is have animals taken from other parts of the state and released in the preserve. These animals were supposed to be native to the area, but most of them end up dead from either disease or other animals and often end up in my cousin's yard.

The county officials are incompetent as heck too. They told her to wrap the dead animal in a plastic bag and put in her freezer so they could come pick it up in a week or so to test it for rabies. I don't see any rational person doing that, especially since you have to test the brain within an hour of death for rabies anyway. I just don't think the local critters like the imported competition. There are several very large gray foxes up there, so big they look like good sized dogs, as well as smaller red foxes, opossum (big ones at that), raccoons, skunks, bobcats all those things.

So, these city folks feel like they're doing something good when they come to the release parties, but they don't stick around to see the thing dead within 2 weeks. Essentially they are taking a healthy animal from a fine home and putting it somewhere it is going to get killed. I hope the Bald Eagles they released last month fair better. Of course they will probably just be getting established when some jerk builds a subdivision around their nest and drives them off.

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 1/6/2006 2:28:14 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, no_reply writes:

Well, there are three things you need to do to successfully compost: 1) Have a compost bin.2) Compact everything as you add more stuff.3) Turn its contents over every once in a while.I put in most of the yard's shredded leaves at the beginning of the year and get peat-like soil by next fall.Our city chips all brush and offers the woodchips for free at their public works center.Tom

I had a compost heap one year but my mother hated it even though it was in the back where no one could see it. That and the idiot neighbor kids kept busting it up to tick me off.

I'm not sure what the city does with it here. After Isabell though they did have collection centers to chip it all up, but then there was so much you really couldn't do anything else with it.

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 1/6/2006 2:28:14 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, no_reply writes:

Well, there are three things you need to do to successfully compost: 1) Have a compost bin.2) Compact everything as you add more stuff.3) Turn its contents over every once in a while.I put in most of the yard's shredded leaves at the beginning of the year and get peat-like soil by next fall.Our city chips all brush and offers the woodchips for free at their public works center.Tom

I had a compost heap one year but my mother hated it even though it was in the back where no one could see it. That and the idiot neighbor kids kept busting it up to tick me off.

I'm not sure what the city does with it here. After Isabell though they did have collection centers to chip it all up, but then there was so much you really couldn't do anything else with it.

[Guest guest]

Another problem with composting here. Mostly what we have a pine trees so whatever compost there is is very acidic.

[Guest guest]

Another problem with composting here. Mostly what we have a pine trees so whatever compost there is is very acidic.

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 1/6/2006 4:14:43 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, rainbow@... writes:

>: "I got a whole crop of good tomatoes that way, by accident."

If seeds sprout 'by accident', we're in big trouble!!!

This reminds me of something. At the very beginning of the Boer Wars in South Africa, there was a column of British troops marching toward one of the cities in Boer territory. The officer in charge had stopped at a farm for breakfast, which the enlisted men were not allowed to partake in. So rather than go hungry, they raided the farm's orchards and took some peaches with them. Not long after, this unit ran into a Boer Commando unit. One thing led to another and the British got shot to pieces.

The dead were buried along the side of the road and survivors retreated whence they had come. A year or two later, a grove of peach trees sprang up from this grave site. It was also said that those trees were among the best and healthiest in the area.

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 1/6/2006 4:14:43 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, rainbow@... writes:

>: "I got a whole crop of good tomatoes that way, by accident."

If seeds sprout 'by accident', we're in big trouble!!!

This reminds me of something. At the very beginning of the Boer Wars in South Africa, there was a column of British troops marching toward one of the cities in Boer territory. The officer in charge had stopped at a farm for breakfast, which the enlisted men were not allowed to partake in. So rather than go hungry, they raided the farm's orchards and took some peaches with them. Not long after, this unit ran into a Boer Commando unit. One thing led to another and the British got shot to pieces.

The dead were buried along the side of the road and survivors retreated whence they had come. A year or two later, a grove of peach trees sprang up from this grave site. It was also said that those trees were among the best and healthiest in the area.

[Guest guest]

>: "I wish they would ban burning where we live."Most of what I burn are tree trimmings, grape vines, and dead wood from the forest, ie. old, dead pine and manzanita branches that are next to useless in fireplaces. Real firewood IS recycled to those with fireplaces. The burnable trash I have accumulated is used to START these blazes. We do have an air quality management district that defines WHEN one is able to burn, and doing so is ONLY allowed for 'agricultural' purposes.  Rainbow

[Guest guest]

I'm sensitive to smoke but I try not to let my health govern what the

healthy majority does! Maybe burning is okay, but I do wonder what

effect it has on pollution? It must be natural in some way since forest

fires are natural and beneficial (it's man who messed things up so they

burn out of control) but of course it's probably because of man's

pollution that the smoke is an unwelcome addition to an urban area.

And most peoples' yards aren't big enough to let everything rot and

provide shelter and food for birds, beetles, mushrooms, etc. Snakes,

rats--too close to the house! I let a little rot naturally but there's

too much to let it all do so. Unless you have a tree chipper and

mulcher. They should have places where you can go and bring your

branches and leaves and they'll mulch them. They could then sell the

mulch and make money and the homeowner would have a free solution.

>

> >: " I wish they would ban burning where we live. "

>

> Most of what I burn are tree trimmings, grape vines, and dead wood

> from the forest, ie. old, dead pine and manzanita branches that are

> next to useless in fireplaces. Real firewood IS recycled to those

> with fireplaces. The burnable trash I have accumulated is used to

> START these blazes. We do have an air quality management district

> that defines WHEN one is able to burn, and doing so is ONLY allowed

> for 'agricultural' purposes.

>

> Rainbow

>

[Guest guest]

>: "I'm sensitive to smoke"I am also VERY sensitive to smoke! 'Allergic' to tobacco smoke.>"It must be natural in some way since forest fires are natural and beneficial"Exactly! Clearing dead wood from this 'fire forest', that hasn't been ALLOWED to burn in a hundred years makes room for birds, small mammals, and hopefully even some of the larger ones, deer, mountain loin, even bear to return to it's former homeland.>".....smoke is an unwelcome addition to an urban area"I find it hard to go TO town on cold winter days because of wood smoke pollution!>"And most peoples' yards aren't big enough...."My neighborhood averages about one hundred acre parcels, some much smaller, some much bigger.>"They should have places where you can go and bring your branches and leaves...."We do, but my truck won't hold all that much, it is miles from here, and they charge too much!    Rainbow

[Guest guest]

>Tom: "Well, there are three things you need to do to successfully compost:...."Or, you can do as I do and just have a 'place' where you simply throw the stuff day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, and just let it rot.I dream about all the 'good' stuff on the bottom of the pile, and DO plan, someday, to dig it up and cycle it throughout my garden.Doing so is also, always, on the bottom of my 'to do' list, though.  Rainbow

[Guest guest]

>Tom: "Well, there are three things you need to do to successfully compost:...."Or, you can do as I do and just have a 'place' where you simply throw the stuff day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, and just let it rot.I dream about all the 'good' stuff on the bottom of the pile, and DO plan, someday, to dig it up and cycle it throughout my garden.Doing so is also, always, on the bottom of my 'to do' list, though.  Rainbow

[Guest guest]

We never burn our leaves though we have a lot of them because they

decompose quickly. Some we shred and compost and some we use as

mulch. I decided I'd rather be environmental and use leaves as mulch

though they are less attractive than a bark mulch. They put a lot of

nutrients back in the soil quickly, too. We leave them under the

trees to a certain radius. I have a place where I throw clippings and

some branches in the back yard. We don't have a fireplace and

sometimes we burn larger branches.

I love composting. I'm amazed at how quickly garbage turns into

beautiful black dirt. And then the worms find it. It's a perfect

system! And if you make your own you don't have to worry about the

quality of the purchased compost. Sometimes seeds will germinate in

the compost and will grow quickly and healthily even though it's in

the shade! I got a whole crop of good tomatoes that way, by accident.

>

> And most peoples' yards aren't big enough to let everything rot and

> provide shelter and food for birds, beetles, mushrooms, etc. Snakes,

> rats--too close to the house! I let a little rot naturally but

> there's too much to let it all do so. Unless you have a tree

chipper

> and mulcher. They should have places where you can go and bring your

> branches and leaves and they'll mulch them. They could then sell the

> mulch and make money and the homeowner would have a free solution.

>

[Guest guest]

> Or, you can do as I do and just have a 'place' where you simply

throw

> the stuff day after day, week after week, month after month, year

> after year, and just let it rot.

>

> I dream about all the 'good' stuff on the bottom of the pile, and DO

> plan, someday, to dig it up and cycle it throughout my garden.

>

> Doing so is also, always, on the bottom of my 'to do' list, though.

>

>

I used to do that, and when I did finally dugg it up it was a

surprising amount of rich, black dirt.

>

[Guest guest]

>: "I got a whole crop of good tomatoes that way, by accident."If seeds sprout 'by accident', we're in big trouble!!!  Rainbow

[Guest guest]

>: "I got a whole crop of good tomatoes that way, by accident."If seeds sprout 'by accident', we're in big trouble!!!  Rainbow

[Guest guest]

>: "I used to do that, and when I did finally dugg it up it was a surprising amount of rich, black dirt."You are most welcome to come and dig mine up anytime!   Rainbow

[Guest guest]

Actually though, there is an easy way to help the environment that

does NOT occur to anyone since we have all conditioned ourselves to

have manicured lawns (and since we have zoning ordinances that

prohibit the idea I have in mind).

My idea:

People can rip out their store bought grass and replant it all with

plants and grasses native to the region...and never cut the lawn.

We have Kentucky bluegrass where I live (a suburb of Chicago)which

is not native to our climate. It dies if you don't water it because

the roots only go down a few inches, and when the soil gets dry, the

plants dry out.

But if people in my area replanted with native prairie grass, the

roots would be eight feet deep and the grass six feet high. You

would hardly ever need to water it since the roots go so deep, and

lots of birds and animals could make their home there.

When a tree dies, I would cut it down and replace it with trees

native to my area: Red oak primarily.

What I would have in a hundred years or more is a savannah-

grassland, which was what we had around here before the farmers

arrived.

There is a park nearby which still has some of the original oak

trees that were here before the suburb got built up.

Of course you'd have all sorts of critters running around and

bolting into the street. There would be bugs, flies, and tics. But

my thought was that if people got annoyed enough, they could move,

and then we'd tear down their houses and put in more grass.

Tom

Administrator

In a message dated 1/6/2006 2:28:14 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,

no_reply writes:

Well, there are three things you need to do to successfully compost:

1) Have a compost bin.

2) Compact everything as you add more stuff.

3) Turn its contents over every once in a while.

I put in most of the yard's shredded leaves at the beginning of the

year and get peat-like soil by next fall.

Our city chips all brush and offers the woodchips for free at their

public works center.

Tom

I had a compost heap one year but my mother hated it even though it

was in the back where no one could see it. That and the idiot

neighbor kids kept busting it up to tick me off.

I'm not sure what the city does with it here. After Isabell though

they did have collection centers to chip it all up, but then there

was so much you really couldn't do anything else with it.

[Guest guest]

Actually though, there is an easy way to help the environment that

does NOT occur to anyone since we have all conditioned ourselves to

have manicured lawns (and since we have zoning ordinances that

prohibit the idea I have in mind).

My idea:

People can rip out their store bought grass and replant it all with

plants and grasses native to the region...and never cut the lawn.

We have Kentucky bluegrass where I live (a suburb of Chicago)which

is not native to our climate. It dies if you don't water it because

the roots only go down a few inches, and when the soil gets dry, the

plants dry out.

But if people in my area replanted with native prairie grass, the

roots would be eight feet deep and the grass six feet high. You

would hardly ever need to water it since the roots go so deep, and

lots of birds and animals could make their home there.

When a tree dies, I would cut it down and replace it with trees

native to my area: Red oak primarily.

What I would have in a hundred years or more is a savannah-

grassland, which was what we had around here before the farmers

arrived.

There is a park nearby which still has some of the original oak

trees that were here before the suburb got built up.

Of course you'd have all sorts of critters running around and

bolting into the street. There would be bugs, flies, and tics. But

my thought was that if people got annoyed enough, they could move,

and then we'd tear down their houses and put in more grass.

Tom

Administrator

In a message dated 1/6/2006 2:28:14 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,

no_reply writes:

Well, there are three things you need to do to successfully compost:

1) Have a compost bin.

2) Compact everything as you add more stuff.

3) Turn its contents over every once in a while.

I put in most of the yard's shredded leaves at the beginning of the

year and get peat-like soil by next fall.

Our city chips all brush and offers the woodchips for free at their

public works center.

Tom

I had a compost heap one year but my mother hated it even though it

was in the back where no one could see it. That and the idiot

neighbor kids kept busting it up to tick me off.

I'm not sure what the city does with it here. After Isabell though

they did have collection centers to chip it all up, but then there

was so much you really couldn't do anything else with it.

[Guest guest]

This was a tale that should have been told on Halloween.

All of a sudden I feel so hungry...

Tom

This reminds me of something. At the very beginning of the Boer Wars

in South Africa, there was a column of British troops marching toward

one of the cities in Boer territory. The officer in charge had stopped

at a farm for breakfast, which the enlisted men were not allowed to

partake in. So rather than go hungry, they raided the farm's orchards

and took some peaches with them. Not long after, this unit ran into a

Boer Commando unit. One thing led to another and the British got shot

to pieces.

The dead were buried along the side of the road and survivors

retreated whence they had come. A year or two later, a grove of peach

trees sprang up from this grave site. It was also said that those

trees were among the best and healthiest in the area.

[Guest guest]

>: "It was also said that those trees were among the best and healthiest in the area."LOL!!! My best peaches come from a tree that began as a spit pit.   Rainbow

[Guest guest]

>: "It was also said that those trees were among the best and healthiest in the area."LOL!!! My best peaches come from a tree that began as a spit pit.   Rainbow